It's called pro-biotics. As opposed to anti-biotics. With pro-biotics, such as acidolphus bifidus, and bifo-bacteria, you eat the bacteria right in the food product. The bacteria then populate your intestines and actually help you to pre-digest your food for you, saving your digestive system from having to do it all. This allows you to eat things that humans can't really digest well, or particular people can't digest well, like beans. The bacteria also produce waste products that can be beneficial, like vitamin B12. This happens in animal digestive systems, also, which is why animal flesh is a source of vitamin B12.

With anti-biotics, you aren't getting the living agent (a fungus found in dirt) you are benefiting from its toxic secretions that help the particular life-form to compete in the cruel world of bacteria, mold and fungus war for dominance in a particular ecosystem.

(Note: When you take anti-biotics, you are ingesting the toxic secretions of fungi and bacteria that they use to kill each other with or slow each other's development. This can also kill off the beneficial "good" bacteria that your normal digestive system relies on to stay healthy, and so you should take a pro-biotic supplement along with the anti-biotic, or eat lots of live yogurt cultures. Otherwise, the yeasts in your system can "take over" and overpopulate your digestive tract. )

We have manufactured yeasts for breads and beer that are so strong and so virulent, that unchecked, they can take over your system and cause lots of damage because the yeast has a stage of development where it grows a mycelium, which is like tree roots, that grows into your intestines and can cause permeability, thus allowing undigested food to get directly into your bloodstream, and this can cause your immune system to react to your favorite foods as if they were a virus or forgein object. So sometimes a round of antibiotics can be the precursor to developing a food allergy or food sensitivity.)

So, I guess, the food you are eating, then, the dead part, like the milk the yogurt is made out of is a "meat" product, because it is produced by animals, but the bacteria that is in the yogurt (eating the milk as you are eating them) is not "meat" in the classic sense, but it is a living thing. If the fermented product is a vegetable or fruit, then it might still be classified as a vegan product, but with the interesting added component of living entities who are also eating the same food at the same time you are, but often end up passing right through you in the end. So I guess you could say that the various vegetarian life forms are sharing a living space for a while....

Wine and beer are made with yeast. Yeast is alive but can be stored for very long times because it can go into a sort of hibernation mode when there is no nutrient or water present. Usually, the yeast is dead when you eat it, from too much alcohol, or too much heat (as when it is used to raise dough in making breads.) But sometimes the cooking/fermenting process doesn't kill all the yeast off, and you get living yeast into your system, which then takes up residence and further digests some of the sugars and starches in your food as it passes through.

Mushrooms eat vegetables, but do not produce their own energy through photosynthesis, like plants do. Mushrooms are vegetarians, then. And people who eat mushrooms are really eating a fungi.

So what do you classify a fungi? It's alive, it eats dead and decaying vegetables. I guess you could call vegetarians fungi, then. If you want to.

If you do, however, I will then compare you with flies, and mosquitos. Who live off of animals -- the flies eat dead animals and the mosquitos eat off of the live ones, like vampire bats.

Here is a study on the health benefits of eating fruits and vegetables. (Not supplements.)

"This latest study in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease confirms previous studies on vegetable intake and dementia. Here, healthy subjects between the ages of 45 and 102 underwent cognitive testing while their blood was checked for antioxidant micronutrients and biomarkers of oxidative stress. Their daily fruit and vegetable intake was also assessed.

The subjects in the high fruit and veggie intake group scored significantly higher on the cognitive tests, and they also had higher antioxidant levels and lower biomarkers for oxidative stress than those in the low intake group.

Cognitive test scores were positively correlated with blood levels of a-tocopherol and lycopene, and negatively correlated with F2a isoprostanes (potent vasoconstrictors) and protein carbonyls – a byproduct of oxidation that causes cell damage.

The results were independent of age, gender, body mass index, education, total cholesterol, LDL- and HDL-cholesterol, triglycerides, and albumin.

The researchers concluded that “modification of nutritional habits aimed at increasing intake of fruits and vegetables should be encouraged to lower prevalence of cognitive impairment in later life.”

They focused their recommendation on fruits and vegetables as opposed to the antioxidants themselves, as previous studies have shown that while antioxidants from food have a beneficial impact on your brain and can prevent cognitive decline, supplements do not appear to offer the same benefits.

It seems your brain is too smart to settle for second best, and the key for brain health is FOOD based, and can likely not be duplicated by supplements alone."

Someday I might have some time and go through them and put up another entry of these ideas, resources, links and some of the funny, and interesting parts. However, what I would edit out would include some of the extreme stuff, and the repetitive stuff, and the stuff that is just lame. Some of it has some "shock" value and could be very entertaining to some readers, so if you have an interest in this topic and want to see it all, I think the original thread speaks for itself.

Disclaimer:

Even though I tried to be sincere, honest, accurate and factual and to quote other sources accurately, occasionally I have made some mistakes and I might have made some and not caught them. I hope that if you quote me in another context, that you will double-check my sources and make sure everything is accurate and spelled correctly. I didn't always stick to the topic, I rambled quite a bit, and I hope that anyone taking the time to read this will forgive me for that.

However, I created this series mainly for myself, because for some reason the thread intrigued me enough to get me to think very carefully about the topic, and to spend a lot of time and energy researching and composing my posts. So I guess this was a nice hobby for me that year, and it distracted me from some other issues for a while.Thank you to Blogger for storing this for me and for allowing me to share my views with anyone who happens to be interested and stops by here.

I welcome and look forward to reading any comments, corrections and additional discussion on this topic.

Update: I currently follow the Blood Type Diet. I am a type O negative, and following the blood type suggestions and eating meat sometimes is the way I feel best. I am still very sensitive and react to gluten and strictly avoid all gluten in my diet. I can eat some dairy now, but I have to limit it to certain kinds like Kefir.

I often go long periods without eating meat at all, and I eat very little red meat. If I do eat red meat it is grass-fed meat, or free range animals, like buffalo, or occasionally, deer, I eat some organically raised free-range and locally grown chicken less than once a week. I know this sounds "picky" but it really just reflects my long history of eating very little meat, and so I can afford to be picky about the little I do eat.

I don't think I would have ever learned so much about food and nutrition and tried so many different diets if I hadn't had health problems for over 20 years from being an un-diagnosed Celiac. At one time it was so bad I thought I wouldn't make it another year. I had so many symptoms I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. I don't wish this on anyone else, but it took me on this journey that taught me so much and made me so aware of food, nutrition and made me think about where my food came from and how it was produced, and the meaning of nourishment in all its forms, physical, social, and emotional.